Week One. Check.

It's official. The first week of school: grabbed by the horns, done with a vengeance, and now complete.

What Corynn learned:

~ Focused on her short A sound, practiced all the others.

~ Did more Math than we have ever done before. Practiced counting to 100, which she did well with just a teensy bit of help. Her favorite? Counting, subtracting and dividing into equal parts CANDY CORN. Yeah-that one even made it into her afternoon lunchtime prayer "Thank you God for making Mama give us candy corn to count for a special treat. They were SO delicious and it was such a fun surprise that I would love it if we got to do that tomorrow too!" ha.

~ Relearned and lived the story of David

~ Introduction to quite a selection of art~ the most poignant for her: a painting by Gerome depicting Martyr'd Christians in a Roman colosseum.

~ Self read four Bob books, all on her own and independently read a plethora of words created in pencil, crayon, playdough, and pointed out in stories. It is starting to click!!! WA HOO!

Things Panda learned (and things I learned about Panda):

~ He wants to sit with us, no matter how long and 'do' school too. Not even my suggestion.

~ He can complete shape puzzles in record time- like SECONDS.

~ He can now complete a 15 piece puzzle with minimal assistance. He just was introduced to it on Monday, but it had a tractor on it, so he was infatuated-and begged to do it every single day.

~ He can count to 15 easy, peasy with no help at all. At just two- this impresses me, probably because Corynn took much longer to get the whole numbers game. I think this boy is a numbers kind of guy which is fantastic, because I am not.

~Became very interested in colors and shapes, and especially MATCHING colors this week.

~ He is very good at praising his sister. I would often hear him say "Good job di-da!" in an enthusiastic voice. This boy of mine, he is top-notch.

What I learned:

~ If school becomes a routine, I CAN be self-disciplined enough to do it each day!

~ I got everything done everyday that I wanted to get done, if I set my mind to it.

~ Though I did get everything done, I really need to schedule my week in advance so I don't scrounge around each morning. Being more organized is at the top of my 'necessary to-do list".

~ I am already loving the flexibility of homeschooling.

~ I am loving watching my children ENJOY doing school- helps me to be enthusiastic.

~ Having some sort of creative outlet is a great way to break up the subjects. Making bookmarks for our workbooks did WONDERS to get her revived to get through one last lesson. Apple printing and creating clay words was just as educational, but left smiles on their faces for the rest of the day. Mental note: these are goods things. Do them more.

~ Corynn needs a more mature, all-encompassing approach to phonics to go along with the simple worksheets she does. She loves the worksheets, but she is far beyond working an entire week on a single phoneme. I need to challenge her a bit more.

~ Phonics and Math are great, but I want to do more hands-on stuff too. Art. Nature study. Memorization. I'm going to tack on some things for future weeks.

Overall, it was a GREAT week. I actually can't complain about a single thing. Most especially, I am thankful to realize that I can be self-disciplined enough to do it each day. It helps to have a little girl rushing to get clothes on and teeth brushed to 'do school'.

We are all looking forward to next week!

Now that this is written, I look forward to our LAST week of school, and the time I can revisit this post and see how far we've come. I wonder where we will be then...